The present invention relates to processes for producing amorphous or crystalline materials used for optical communication, lasers and other applications, and produced amorphous or crystalline materials.
Single-crystal or polycrystalline optical devices perform important roles in the fields of optical communication and lasers. Especially in optical communication, devices utilizing nonlinear characteristics of crystals are used for wavelength conversion and optical isolator. Nonlinear optical crystals are grown by various methods. Examples are; method (such as Czochralski method) of pulling a seed crystal up from a melt of a well-controlled composition, method (LPE) of inserting a substrate of matched lattice constants into a melt of a desired composition, and vapor phase growth method (such as MOCVD).
Amorphous material is superior in productivity to crystalline material. Examples are; quartz glass usable for fiber, optical glass usable for lens and amorphous film usable for reflection and wavelength selection. However, amorphous materials are low in nonlinearity, and hence inferior in properties as optical device, to crystalline materials.